Race, Public Opinion, Policy Preferences, and Mass Incarceration

Flashcards related to race, public opinion, policy preferences, and mass incarceration.

What event led Black Americans to support the Republican party en masse in the 1800s?

Civil War + subsequent abolition of slavery

What event began to shift blacks’ support from the Republican party to the Democratic party?

The Great Depression

What is the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, creed, or national origin.

What is the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

Created method of enforcement for the 15th amendment

What is public opinion?

The various attitudes or views large communities of people hold about politics and the actions of government

What is political socialization?

The process through which people learn their beliefs, values, and behaviors about politics shape public opinion

What is political ideology?

Attitudes and beliefs that help shape our opinions on political theory and policy form our political ideology

What is the primacy principle?

What is learned first tends to leave a strong and lasting impression that remains with a person throughout life

What is linked fate?

Notion that what happens to one member of the group impacts all members of the group

What is the Racial Threat Hypothesis?

The larger a population of a minoritized group, the more the majority group aims to exert social control through social, political, and economic means

What is Collective Racial Memory?

Historical events not only shape the political views of an immediate generation but prompt the political interpretations of succeeding generations guided by these events

What is the Southern Strategy?

Political strategy to use racial symbols and coded language to draw support from prejudiced white Southern voters

What are racial covenants?

Instructions written into home deeds preventing the home be sold to African Americans, Jews, Mexicans, and other minorities

What is racial steering?

When realtors or mortgage companies steer certain families to live in certain neighborhoods that are all black or all white

What is blockbusting?

Practice where a Black family moves into a neighborhood, effectively realtors encourage them to sell their homes at a low price

What is redlining?

Illegal discriminatory practice in which a mortgage lender denies home loans to members who live in a certain community, often because of the racial characteristics of that community

What are sundown towns?

Predominantly white municipalities in the United States that actively practiced racial segregation by excluding non-whites through local laws, intimidation, or violence

What is environmental racism?

Native reservations are continually used for nuclear waste sites —> Natives more likely to live in areas with hazardous waste sites

What are food deserts?

Low-income geographic area where a significant number of people have little or no access to nutritious and affordable food products, such as fresh fruits and vegetables

What is affirmative action?

Policy of admission aimed to increase representation of women and people of color in higher education

What are segregation academies?

Private schools established by white families—primarily in the American South—to avoid racial integration after public schools were ordered to desegregate following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision

What is critical theory?

Examines power structures and institutions

What is interest convergence?

Anytime there are advancements or progress made on race relations it is not done out of altruistic reasons. It is done because the dominant white ruling class has an interest that would be served

What is intersectionality?

Citizens can have multiple marginalized identities

What is the Black-White binary?

Racial history is presented as a linear story between White and Black Americans

What are the Black Codes?

Laws created to continue disenfranchising former slaves from their newly secured freedom. Examples include criminalizing loitering and vagrancy

What is broken windows policing?

Low-level crime and disorder creates an environment that encourages more serious crimes